Mark Twain
Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne
Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), an American novelist,
essayist, and lecturer noted for his humor and biting satire. Born in
Florida, Missouri to a poor family, his father failed in business
repeatedly and died of pneumonia when Sam was eleven. He went to work as
an apprentice typesetter and then for brother Orion’s Hannibal
Journal. He worked as a journeyman printer in the east and started
writing humorous articles and sketches to fill space. He returned to
Missouri and worked as riverboat pilot until the Civil War broke out in
1861. He avoided service in the Confederate Army by journeying to
Nevada with his brother Orion, then secretary to the territorial
governor. After a failed attempt to strike it rich as a miner he wrote
for the paper in Virginia City, where he adopted the pen name Mark
Twain. He developed a specialty as a traveling correspondent, posting
pieces from Hawaii for the Sacramento Union and then a journal from a
six month excursion to Europe and the Holy Land that formed his first
book in 1869, The Innocents Abroad, considered the most popular travel
book ever written. He followed with Roughing It in 1872, a portrait of
life on the American frontier, and The Gilded Age in that same year, a
satirical treatise on the follies and foibles of the emerging elite in
American culture. |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Hank Morgan, an engineer living in Hartford, Connecticut in the late 19th century, gets knocked out ..
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn captures the essence of a time when most Americans lived on farms and..
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Life On The Mississippi
Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain, published in 1883 and, notably, the first submiss..
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Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte, published in 1896, is Mark Twain..
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer is an All-American Boy living in a time when America is still young and unencumbered by t..
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The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
One gilds things to make them look better than they really are. Mark Twain, the same writer who turn..
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The Prince and the Pauper
The Prince and the Pauper was Mark Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction, published in Canada,..
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